S4E18: Where Your Nails Are with Thomas E. Kennedy

Colin Marshall sits down in one of Copenhagen's many storied serving houses with Thomas E. Kennedy, author of the "Copenhagen Quartet" of novels In the Company of Angels, Kerrigan in Copenhagen: A Love Story, Falling Sideways, and the forthcoming Beneath the Neon Egg. They discuss whether one can truly know Copenhagen without knowing its serving houses; the drinking guide from which Kerrigan in Copenhagen takes its "experimental" form; his mission not just to know all of the city's serving houses, but to incorporate as much of its culture as possible into his books and to capture the "light of the four seasons" which first captivated him in 1972; how he came to live in Copenhagen, and the breakthrough as a fiction writer the act of leaving his native America brought about; how he overcame his fear of writing Danish characters; what happens after the first toast at a Danish dinner party; how he managed to take notes for the corporate satire Falling Sideways during dreaded office meetings; what it means that Danes tend to greet everyone in a room in rank order; his immersion into the Danish lifestyle, and to what extend the much-touted Danish happiness comes out of reduced expectations; whether he counts as an American, mid-Atlantic, Danish, Irish-American, or American European writer; how one society's clichés, such as the Danish expression "to hang your pictures where your nails are," offer bursts of insight to another; the American tendency to cling to differences and identity; the noir Beneath the Neon Egg, which explores Copenhagen's underbelly of violence, crime, drugs, sex clubs, and its famous commune Christiana; how his conversion into a full-time novelist fits in with his habit of "living life on fortune" (and why he may have written more with a day job); how Danes react to his depictions of them; and what his life in Denmark has taught him about the importance of taxes.